Arts & Culture

More on The Great Shlep

By Simon Glickman / September 29, 2008

Thanks to some killer PR and the hard work of folks like Mik Moore at the Jewish Council for Education & Research, among many others, The Great Schlep goes down on Columbus Day weekend. It’s a mass pilgrimage of young Jews to Florida and other swing states, where they will endeavor to convince their older, often "low-information" relatives to vote for Obama.

I attended a beautiful fundraiser for said initiative the other night. It was held at the mansion-like home of some very generous entertainment-industry peeps, and I met a couple of mega-hot Jewish celebrities there who nearly made my knees buckle. The food, provided by the reliably brilliant Provisions (aka very haute Jew Lisa Feinstein and crew), was a gourmandish series of twists on classic bubbie nosh: brisket on toast, borscht shots (with crème fraĂ®che and orange zest), mini-kugels, patĂ© (chopped liver), succulent smoked salmon. The wine flowed freely. Handsomely attired Hebrews strolled the lush environs. And yet, from the cocktail-hour chatter, you’d think we were all about to be herded onto trains to Dachau. Everyone was so worried. So terribly concerned. Worried about racist voters. Concerned about easily misled voters. Worried that Sarah Palin would become President in ten minutes and life would turn into The Handmaid’s Tale. Concerned about what Bill Clinton said on TV. Worried about what their neighbors said in the driveway. Anecdotal blips on the radar screen were described like incoming ballistic missiles. For sheer doom-and-gloom certainty, I’d put any random bunch of Jews, even a well-heeled, high-information batch of Hollywood activist types such as these, up against the most rabid evangelicals in full apocalypse mode. Fortunately, the presentation — by Mik and various other folks from JCER, JewsVote.org and other cool outfits (including friend of this blog and mightily pregnant genius Jill Soloway) soothed some of these fears by describing the Schlep and making a charming appeal for support before screening this inspired, typically raunchy promotional video by Sarah Silverman.

 

 

Before I go on, I’d like to say a couple of quick things about this video. First: Our Sarah will kick their Sarah’s ass. Next: I don’t wanna hear about how you found this video offensive or untoward or how it made you uncomfortable. It isn’t for you. It’s for the kids who are going to journey to the heart of their grandparents’ couches to close the deal for Obama, and they fully get and love her spiel. So shut your homentaschen hole. Now I’d like to speak to the kids. We often hear that children are the future, and ordinarily I don’t agree. I just don’t see the proof. But in this case, yes, children — specifically motivated and liberal teenage and twentysomething children and grandchildren of poorly informed, slightly confused elderly voters in swing states – emphatically are the future. So you know your job, right, kinder? It’s up to you to convince Bubbie and Zayde (and great aunt Rivke and cousin Manny and all their friends at the Senior Center) to cast their vote for our guy. This may not be as simple as it sounds. All kinds of ridiculous lies about Obama being a Muslim or not supporting Israel or whatever have been circulating like swamp gas among Jewish retirees, fueled by the Karl Rove innuendo factory. Then there’s plain old ingrained racism, about which we’d like to think Jews would be more enlightened, but there you go. You will encounter resistance. You must crush that resistance with everything you’ve got. If you think I mean "Ply nana with an extra pot of Russian tea and tell her about Barack’s thoughtful foreign-policy stances," you need to get real. I’m talking about tough love. I’m talking about winning this thing. Like Sarah S. suggests, I’m talking about emotional blackmail. Nana has to understand that if she doesn’t vote for Obama she’s endangering her relationship with you. This may seem harsh, but let’s face it: If McCain wins this thing, we’re mega-fucked. So it’s time to put all our chips on the table, including our willingness to stay in touch with low-info relatives in swing states. Look, I just want to help. I don’t have any relatives in Boca, and my peeps are all voting for Obama anyway. But I thought I’d just sketch out a couple of talking points for you. Of course, you do want to blow away the nonsense: No, he’s not a Muslim, and a prominent Chicago rabbi wrote an editorial about how spreading this smear is lashon ha-ra. Barack’s been endorsed by 900 rabbis. The Israelis like and respect him. You’ll also want to make it clear that McCain’s campaign is full of classic Jew-haters, and that Sarah Palin is a dangerous fanatic who scares the crap out of Israel. She believes Jews must be converted, she quoted racist Westbrook Pegler in her acceptance speech, and her church hosted a witch-hunting wacko who made some classically anti-Semitic inferences that can be found here. You might imply casually that she writes erotic fiction about the Third Reich under a nom de plume; can anyone prove she doesn’t?

And given the age of your audience, it wouldn’t hurt to remind them that McCain, not Obama, wants to bet their Social Security check on the same stock market that just fell apart. Still, we both know that voting often comes down to abstract, emotional issues. For whatever reason, many older Jews have inhaled enough miasmic right-wing spew to feel an ingrained distrust of our candidate. That’s where the tough love comes in. So let me offer you a few constructive dramatizations. "Nana, you’re going to vote for Obama. He’s a wonderful candidate and the only one who can save our country. A vote for him is a vote for my future. So if you love me and want me to have a future, you will vote for him." Let’s say she looks down at the plate of kichel, heaves a weary sigh and says, "I’m sorry; I just can’t vote for him." What are you gonna do, pack up your stuff and head for the bus station? I think not. You’re gonna double down. "Bubbie, let’s be clear: You will vote for Obama. If you don’t, you are dead to me. Because you will have chosen your wretched fears over my fondest hopes and flushed my dreams down the crapper because some idiot alteh cocker down the hall told you the shvartzeh won’t stand up for Israel. And I don’t care if you call him by that vile word as you pull the lever for him, even though every time you old Jews say it the little children who died in the camps and are now in heaven cry tears of blood that stain the fluffy clouds beneath their angel feet. You will vote for Obama because you if you don’t, I’m going to come back here and we’re going to get a knife from the kitchen and you can stab me right in the heart, just as Abraham was prepared to do with Isaac before the Lord stayed his hand. Is that what you want to do?" I’m thinking by this time she’s going to start to come around. Sure, it’s a risky gambit to fire these emotional cannons at our frail old family members. But nothing ventured, nothing gained. Plus, when Obama wins in November and you come back to show them a bunch of family videos and have a nice picnic at the wrought-iron tables in the condo courtyard, they’ll be delighted beyond belief. And so will you. If, like me, you can’t personally go on the Great Schlep, why not make a contribution?

  [Cross-posted from Simon's wonderful blog, Very Hot Jews]

 

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  • By Isaac 10/7/08 at 1:49 p.m. UTC

    McCain advisor Rick Davis was paid millions by the firms long after he could be said to be doing anything even remotely approximating work for them. But don’t let that get in the way of your prejudices or anything.

  • By Anonymous 10/7/08 at 9:08 a.m. UTC
    hey grandma and grandpa?

    i know your retirement income looks like it’s not going to be there next week because of this freddie mac fanny mae thing. what a bummer, right? but i need you to do me a solid, okay?

    i need you to vote against the guys who tried to set up the regulatory apparatus which may have prevented this financial crisis, and instead vote for the guy who has had two fanny mae executives as advisors to his campaign and took more money from them than any other congressmember.

  • By Isaac 10/6/08 at 7:38 p.m. UTC

    Rob, when I asked my ass who’s 2nd to the president, my ass told me it was Dick Cheney. You know, number two. That’s usually how numbering systems work. And therefore Pelosi would be number three.

    So I went back to my ass, and said, "Ass, perhaps Rob isn’t as wrong on this one as he’s been on everything else." And my ass said, "Sure, that’s certainly a possibility." So my ass told me to give you the benefit of the doubt and go with a numbering system that doesn’t include the preznit as the guy in charge, and start with Dick and move on down. By that reckoning, we get to former klansman Robert Byrd as number three, and both you and my ass are happy. So cheer up, Sport.

    Also, as I said, it achieves the symbolism of not counting our vacationer-in-chief as Numero Uno. Which is kind of nice. Isn’t it? Wouldn’t want to put too much pressure on the guy or nothin’.

  • By Rob 10/6/08 at 1:53 p.m. UTC

    Also, put your brain back into your head and learn about the fact that the SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE is third in line in succession to the president

    Correction: Oh, ok. Third in line if you’re not already COUNTING THE PRESIDENT

    I’ll put my brain back in my head if you remove yours from your ass.

  • By Isaac 10/5/08 at 5:45 p.m. UTC

    Oh, ok. Third in line if you’re not already COUNTING THE PRESIDENT.

    Maybe you’re not. I wouldn’t either. He’s on vacation an awful lot.

  • By Isaac 10/5/08 at 5:34 p.m. UTC

    Rob, you must think you’re pretty clever by pointing to the anachronistic anomaly of Robert Byrd.

    The fact is that following passage of the Civil Rights bills (which, yes, received more support from Republicans at the time than Democrats – wow thanks for the history lesson, you must have assumed I never knew that) Democrats got on board with that train pretty quickly, leaving the vaccuum of resentful Southern whites open to poaching from the Republicans. The latter have been the less tolerant of the two ever since.

    Seriously, does the passage of time count for anything to you?

    Also, put your brain back into your head and learn about the fact that the SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE is third in line in succession to the president.

    Stop trying to pretend that you have anything useful to tell me that I didn’t already know and get your freaking facts straight, Dilrod. And stop thinking that just because one political party did something right and one point in time that such action vindicates and absolves it of all its depredations ever since. And stop relying on School House Rock for your research!

  • By Isaac 10/5/08 at 5:23 p.m. UTC

    Rob, your problem is that you would like to believe you’re living in 1860. At least, that’s what you’d like to believe when you’re not pretending we’re living in 1760. But the problem is that we’re currently living in 2008. Get over it. Civil rights happened. The South kicked and screamed over it, the Republicans instituted their Southern strategy under their psychotic and paranoid leader Nixon in response, and have resorted to race-baiting with coded messages since – coded messages that they’re resorting to now with these ideas of an Obama White House being used as a platform from which to persecute po’ lil’ inn-o-cent good white folk with Black Liberation theology, hip-hop music and, just to make things really fun and interesting… TERRORISM!

    Obviously, this is a ridiculous charade, the sign of a desperate campaign in free-fall resorting to the same tropes that Hillary hinted at, and playing on the fears of poor, spiteful or otherwise brain-dead and self-styled white cultural folk heros who fear that blacks in power would oppress whites the same way that whites once oppressed blacks. I know, I know. Paybacks are a bitch. They’re also fictions invented in the minds of that part of the electorate that’s more paranoid and motivated by fear than the other.

    Get over it.

    Y’all will have to get over it sooner or later. You might as well convince your friends to do it now.

  • By Rob 10/5/08 at 5:08 p.m. UTC

    The most senior sitting Democrat is Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia and THIRD in line to be President.

    Byrd joined the KKK when he was twenty four in 1942 (instead of joning the Army to fight the Nazis like Strom Thurmond who was at D-Day). He becaome a senior member of the Klan. 

    When Byrd was twenty eight years old, he wrote about the 1945 racial integration of the military.

    I shall never fight in the armed forces with a Negro by my side… Rather I should die a thousand times, and see Old Glory trampled in the dirt never to rise again, than to see this beloved land of ours become degraded by race mongrels, a throwback to the blackest specimen from the wilds.

    —Robert C. Byrd, in a letter to Sen. Theodore Bilbo (D-MS), 1944

     

    Not to mentioned that he is plainly senile, he is THIRD in line to be President.

    Know who is fourth? Condi Rice who was almost one of the three little girls who Bryd’s pals in Alabama murdered.

    Now some homework for you Issac. Go research the vote Civil Rights Act of 1964 and see who voted for and against it by party.

  • By Isaac 10/5/08 at 5:01 p.m. UTC

    Looks like anon above is making my point for me!

    He and that lovely page 1 story about Army brats in the Carolinas beating the Jewish recruits with shovels. Nice.

    Anon’s brain is too small to realize that McCain isn’t necessarily out to “fuck over the k—-”. He’s out to f— over a whole lot of other people, including the country and its economy as a whole, and Jews are patriotic enough to care about that. Maybe they wouldn’t if their brains and hearts were as small as his, but fortunately they aren’t.

    May his hatred keep his reptilian body from getting too cold at night. Obviously not too many she-nutcases would want to share the bed lest they put up with the stench of his atrocious venom and the mindless treachery of his long fangs. I foresee a Jerry Springer episode in his future.

  • By Rob 10/5/08 at 4:53 p.m. UTC

    Issac –

    If you were not already posting here I would pay you to post. You make my point so much clearer by me easily refuting whatever hamfisted retort you provide.

    Yes. The South  THE DEMOCRAT PARTY is a bastion of tolerance – always ahead of the times when it came to slavery, Jim Crow, segregation and civil rights.

    The Republican Party was founded as an anti-Slavery party with its first President being Lincoln.

    On second thought, you should pay me for the free education I am giving you.

  • By Rob 10/5/08 at 1:04 p.m. UTC

    Sorry…Jews FOR Jesus.

    I’ll put that in before any idots write in to correct a typo and ignore the comment.

  • By Rob 10/5/08 at 1:00 p.m. UTC

    I just loooove the idea of a Southerner lecturing me on tolerance

    Isaac you are a bigot.

    I guess you did not mind Southerns like Carter, Gore and Clinton lecturing you and all of us on everything.

    Palin shares the same air as a nobody from Jews from Jesus once and you get your panties in a bunch. 20 years of spiritual advisement from a fire breathing hate monger and Jew hater like Rev. Wright is no big deal. You would be hilarious if you were not so pathetic.

  • By Isaac 10/4/08 at 4:29 p.m. UTC

    I just loooove the idea of a Southerner lecturing me on tolerance. That’s rich.

    Here‘s a nice little video of one of Sarah Palin’s many nutjob spiritual advisors explaining to everyone that the fact that Jews in Israel die from suicide bombings is evidence of divine retribution for not believing in Jesus. Try persuading any one of us of why we should be tolerant of that.

    No wonder McCain’s campaign and his party is in tatters.

  • By Rob 10/4/08 at 2:26 p.m. UTC
    The Great Shlep Forward
    While down in Florida this October threatening your poor grandparents with all kinds of emotional blackmail for petty political reasons like some new age commisars only with A&F embroided brownshirts so they can be as caring and progressive as you are, be sure to say hello to those Cuban-Americans you encounter. Many of them took a great schelp of their own although it was not via JetBlue or the I-95 in a brand new Prius. They took their great schelp in leaking boats and braved the surf, sharks and Castro’s police state.
    By the way, threats against old people for the sake of socialsim is not exactly a new tactic since marxist Rev. Jim Jones made his money and bones that way.
  • By Moshe Kahan 10/4/08 at 1:48 p.m. UTC

    This might better be called the Great Chutzpah. You have contempt for the generation of your grandparents. When many of them were born their parents were struggling with the aftermath of WWI or emigrating from Russia and Czarist oppression. They grew up during the depression and lived through Pearl Harbor and WWII. They lived with Vietnam and experienced the entire Civil Rights Struggle, and in all of these things they may have been active participants. They are intelligent, creative, resilient and very charitable. It’s not a shlep when you love someone.

  • By SouthernHXCJew 10/1/08 at 4:01 p.m. UTC

    Short and simple. I WILL NOT vote for a man who attends a church that gives an awrd to louis Farrahkhan. However you spell it. Its not happening. Dont sit here and try and tell me Sarah Palin is anti-semitic. I have many Christian friends and a lot want to convert me. Thats just what their religion teaches. A famous conservative writer wrote a book called "Crime and Punishment". It was written in protest to the socialist revolution in Russia. Sadly Dostoyevsky was not successful in relaying his message. And look at what happened to Russia after. This is the norm for a country reverting to socialism. Socialism= obama’s platform.

  • By Rob 9/30/08 at 12:50 p.m. UTC

    A note to Granparents:

    Remember those wonderful grandchildren who couldn’t bother calling you much less visit unless they want something? Well they want something so get out the tea and cookies.Apparentlly they are planning a mini Cultural Revolution called the Great Schlep complete with little red books titled "Dreams of my Father". Since it is a schelp, it suggests that it is a trip they would rather not make. I hate to break this to you but your darling grandchildren  think you are racist old morons. If you try to mention Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner to them they will think you are talking about the war criminal Vice-President and his two neo-cons pals. Yes, I know. Such ignorance.. Blame the schools today, anyway…  

    They will tell you not to vote for McCain who is your age and old enough to know what he is talking about but for a priviledged little lefty who is just like them.

    I am sure he is a nice young man although with a yenta wife. Should G-d forbid, anything happends to Israel, the Obama kid will feel awful about it for a week and then call for restraint on both sides and then start a peace process. Which is like a peace process with Himmler.

    I hope you do the right thing. Tell the little pishers that you will vote for the young kid Obama and then save your grand kids from themselves and vote for McCain.

    Don’t worry, they will never know.

    Be sure to remind them that election day is on Wednesday Nov, 8. They will type it into that Blackberry thingy.

    Oh, and by the way. They have a new thing out called Legal Zoom.com which makes it super easy to write the little bastards out of your will if they don’t show up next fall when they don’t need you anymore.

    Thank you all and G-d bless.

  • By Isaac 9/29/08 at 6:02 p.m. UTC

    "How sad it must be for them after struggling all their lives to see their beloved grandchildren who have freedoms and opportunities they never had; to live lives so free and privledged; to be so frivolous and stupid."

     

    So you’re talking about the Bush administration here, I see.

    I think the lesson is that just as there are no atheists in foxholes and no libertarians in financial crises (props to Krugman), there are no shortage of genocidal xenophobes who will crop up when the government has become so incompetent as to place the entire nation at risk in some sense.  

    Already on YouTube I’m hearing people blame the current financial mess on THE JEWS if you go to videos of Alan Greenspan.

    So you go ahead and make common cause with the nationalists, Rob. The funny thing is that power politics will continue to dominate, as always. And outside of your fantasies there is, as of yet, no single great power that represents  "Western Civilization" as a coherent whole. So you go try and do that. In the meantime, the rest of us – regardless of whatever ancient American tribalisms propelled us to tend toward favoring Democrats 70 years ago (what deja vu!) – will continue to stick with whichever competent pragmatists have proved that they actually place survival and success over the incompetence of ideological bluster in importance. This year, that’s looking like the Democrats.  

    Once Bush and Co. manage to melt down European markets, and their populations respond with real ethnocentric and nationalistic hatred (kind of like the sort they show at times like these), then we can talk about who’s mindlessly making common cause with threats to freedom and the well-being of Jews.   

  • By Rob 9/29/08 at 4:24 p.m. UTC

    I wonder how many "low-information" Jewish relatives have slightly blurry tattoos on their arm. I don’t mean Amy Winehouse ink or fashionable lower back flowers that look so great while wearing a bikini while partying on the Hamptons. I am talking times of "Change" when when government well and truely takes an interest you.

    They can tell you about a time not too long ago when Eastern Europe was

    not a great tourist destination with cheap beer and hot women. 

    I know how fab you and your peeps are and how well informed you all must be about all things geo-political while at your beautiful fundraisers. You are students of scholars like Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz (aka Jon Stewart) and Bill Maher after all. The problem is that your grandparents, and even great-grandparents know what a REAL nazi looks like, they knows what it means to have five Arab armies trying to exterminate the final refuge of the Jewish people in Israel in attempt after attempt for a final solution.

    They know what is like to have sneering, smug and "caring" elitest from universities that you many have attended calling them fascist zionist, moneylenders, neo-cons.

    How sad it must be for them after struggling all their lives to see their beloved grandchildren who have freedoms and opportunities they never had; to live lives so free and privledged; to be so frivolous and stupid.

     

     

     

     

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